Productivity Hacks That Can Help You Stand Out

Talentsquare

Productivity Hacks That Can Help You Stand Out

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Independently of which type of company, whether you are leading or being led, or having great autonomy or not, there are a set of known productivity hacks that can help you improve your performance and stand out.

All of us get caught up in wasting time on non-relevant tasks, using our time ineffectively, having more meetings than required.

I’ve found that there are 7 productivity hacks that can help any employee, freelancer, leader, or directors managing their time better and improve their performance and the performance of their peers.

1. Have a weekly plan in place

Many will tell you to have a daily plan in place. While that might be true it can get you in too much of short-term thinking and therefore getting too operation in your role. It’s always to maintain a balance, so setting at least a weekly plan before your week actually start, and then review each day how you are performing against the pre-defined metrics.

Also ensure that you set a specific amount of time for each priority or task. You’re more likely to be focused and less distracted by your peers. To be aware that this does not mean you don’t pay attention to the ones surround you, just that you defined the time where you can be as focused as possible to accomplish your tasks.

By setting a specific amount of time for each task – for instance, one hour to get that budget report done – you’re more likely to be hyper-focused and not allow yourself to get distracted.

2. Start your day with the most important things

The priorities and tasks you most need to achieve that day should take priority over anything else you might have on your agenda. Interruptions can happen from time to time, but if you have a clear objective of accomplishing your most important tasks, you won’t get too defocused and being able to finish them.

This generally works for most people, but it’s not mandatory. If you have a time of the day where you work best, then use that time to accomplish these important tasks.

3. Stop checking your social media networks

While social media is becoming more relevant to businesses and you might spend more time on it to bring results to the company, it is also true that you can easily get distracted by your news feed, articles, videos and lose focus on your main tasks. A good exercise to understand how much time you spend on social media is to calculate for merely a week how many hours you’ve spent in the

Be honest with yourself, analyze the final results and then take the needed actions, such as setting objectives to reduce amount of time spent there. Of course, all of this if you feel the time spent there is prejudicing your work performance.

4. Avoid filling your day with meetings

People like meetings. It gives the space to discuss, talk about certain tasks, share ideas, frustrations and challenges.

With many meetings you have to keep in mind that always decreases time for work on certain projects that need your attention. Keep meetings to the essential, focused on decision making or moving forward certain projects where everyone needs alignment.

Also stand-up meetings might help sometime. Highly focused, targeted and much less time than an average meeting.

5. Find when you work at your best

Everyone has different times and environments where they are at their best. Being at your best is not only a time coincidence, it’s also the environment.

How your workspace looks like, the time of the day, the effect of the previous tasks, the mood of your boss or colleagues. Find out when you were at your best, more productive and then try to replicate the model several times during the week.

6. Delegate or outsource to someone that can do it better and faster

Delegation is an art. You need to know what to delegate, to whom and know exactly the strengths of the person or entity you are delegating to.

The best way to do it is knowing very well what you want to achieve, what you are the best at doing and whom from your colleagues or partners can support you in achieving it better and faster.

7. Do something you believe in

At the end of the day you are most productive when you are passionate about what you are doing. Be connected to your organization’s vision, understand the end purpose of what you are doing everyday and ensure you are contagious, because if your colleagues are passionate about what they are doing, then you might influencing your organization to become fully purpose-driven.

Productivity will rock, guarantee you.

 

A final thought:

There are plenty of productivity hacks you can use in order to improve your performance at work, school, or even at home.

The most important thing is that you take the time to read them, explore which works best with you and then give it a go for at least a month. As Gandalf said in the Lord of the Rings:

 

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.